Facebook Appoints Legal Representative in Turkey

Facebook began on Monday the process of assigning a legal representative in Turkey to comply with a social media law. According to AFP report, the law which passed in July, requires social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to maintain representatives in Turkey, to coordinate with complaints about content on their platforms.

The companies refusing to designate an official representative are facing fines, advertising bans and bandwidth reductions that would make their networks too slow to use.

On other hand, the Facebook firm noted that the local representative of social media companies would be tasked with responding to inpidual requests to take down content violating privacy and personal rights within 48 hours or to provide grounds for rejection. The company would be held liable for damages if the content is not removed or blocked within 24 hours.

Later, Turkish authorities fined the social media giant at least $5.3 million last year for not complying with the request to assign a representative. Advertising bans for companies that have not complied are set to begin Tuesday.

In contrast, the rights groups explained that the decision by international tech companies to bow to Turkish pressure and appoint representatives would lead to censorship and violations of the right to privacy and access to information. The Freedom of Expression Association says more than 450,000 domains and 42,000 tweets have been blocked in Turkey as of October.

Noteworthy, the Turkey’s antitrust board launched Last week a probe against messaging application WhatsApp and its parent company Facebook for its new usage terms.